“More things are learnt in the woods than from books, trees and rocks will teach you things not to be heard elsewhere. You will see for yourselves that honey may be gathered from stones and oil from the hardest rock.”
- St. Bernard of Clairvaux, French abbot (1090 - 1153)
Thoreau knew the honey; he heard the whisper and called the dialogue our "elemental language," something we knew at birth but, somehow, we have lost the connection, in large part because of all the cultural knowledge and trifling minutiae our society forces us to learn. (Do we really care who Britney Spears is dating? Isn't that her business and not ours?)
Our lives are filled with endless, endless, endless, distractions that prevent us from hearing the wind, the morning birdsong, or even the wisdom of our own thoughts. What are we trying to tell ourselves that we are so dead set against hearing?
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify," says the Master of Walden.
A misty morning is no longer something we can relish: see, feel, taste, touch, but rather, an inconvenience we have to drive through to get to work. Misty mornings are beautiful.
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